Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features the Queen of Memphis Soul Carla Thomas, daughter of Rufus Thomas. Enjoy!
Carla Thomas - Gee Whiz
"Even during the years of the Cold War, the intense confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, we always avoided any direct clash between our civilians and, most certainly, between our military."
-- Vladimir Putin
News and Opinion
Ukraine crisis: Putin says referendum on autonomy should be postponed
The Kremlin beat a tactical retreat over a regional referendum following days of soaring tension that have left dozens dead and fed fears of a civil war in Ukraine.
Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, said the referendum being staged by pro-Russia separatists in parts of eastern Ukraine on Sunday should be postponed. If the referendum goes ahead, it will provide an argument for the region joining Russia as happened in Crimea in March. ...
While Moscow has also opposed the holding of presidential elections in Ukraine on 25 May – a ballot strongly supported by the west – Putin sounded more conciliatory, saying that the poll could be a step in the right direction.
The Russian leader insisted, however, that a presidential election should be preceded by constitutional changes in Ukraine aimed at federalising the country and handing greater powers to the regions, steps that would favour greater Russian influence over eastern Ukraine after the Kremlin annexed Crimea. ...
Putin said Russian troops had been pulled back from the Ukrainian border to their training grounds and locations for "regular exercises" but did not specify whether those were in areas near Ukraine. However, Nato and the White House said they had seen no indication of a change in the position of Russian military forces. ...
It remained unclear whether the pro-Russia gunmen who have taken over public buildings in a number of towns in the Donetsk region would drop their referendum plans. Outside the main headquarters of the separatist movement, an occupied government building in Donetsk, there was confusion at Putin's statement. A group of men guarding the entrance insisted that it was impossible Putin had offered support for the Kiev elections and asked to delay the referendum, and were certain it was a false story dreamed up by nefarious Ukrainian and western media.
"So Russia has abandoned us as well," said Natalia Medvedenko, 58. "Well we will just have to fight the fascists on our own. But I still don't quite believe it."
Slavoj Žižek has an interesting analysis, it's worth a click to read the whole thing:
Who can control the post-superpower capitalist world order?
In the Soviet Union, if you wanted better hospital treatment, say, or a new apartment, if you had a complaint against the authorities, were summoned to court or wanted your child to be accepted at a top school, you knew the implicit rules. You understood whom to address or bribe, and what you could or couldn't do. After the collapse of Soviet power, one of the most frustrating aspects of daily life for ordinary people was that these unwritten rules became seriously blurred. People simply did not know how to react, how to relate to explicit legal regulations, what could be ignored, and where bribery worked. ... The stabilisation of society under the Putin reign is largely because of the newly established transparency of these unwritten rules. Now, once again, people mostly understand the complex cobweb of social interactions.
In international politics, we have not yet reached this stage. Back in the 1990s, a silent pact regulated the relationship between the great western powers and Russia. Western states treated Russia as a great power on the condition that Russia didn't act as one. But what if the person to whom the offer-to-be-rejected is made actually accepts it? What if Russia starts to act as a great power? A situation like this is properly catastrophic, threatening the entire existing fabric of relations – as happened five years ago in Georgia. Tired of only being treated as a superpower, Russia actually acted as one.
How did it come to this? The "American century" is over, and we have entered a period in which multiple centres of global capitalism have been forming. In the US, Europe, China and maybe Latin America, too, capitalist systems have developed with specific twists: the US stands for neoliberal capitalism, Europe for what remains of the welfare state, China for authoritarian capitalism, Latin America for populist capitalism. After the attempt by the US to impose itself as the sole superpower – the universal policeman – failed, there is now the need to establish the rules of interaction between these local centres as regards their conflicting interests.
This is why our times are potentially more dangerous than they may appear. During the cold war, the rules of international behaviour were clear, guaranteed by the Mad-ness – mutually assured destruction – of the superpowers. When the Soviet Union violated these unwritten rules by invading Afghanistan, it paid dearly for this infringement. The war in Afghanistan was the beginning of its end. Today, the old and new superpowers are testing each other, trying to impose their own version of global rules, experimenting with them through proxies – which are, of course, other, small nations and states.
Ukraine forces briefly occupy city hall in eastern Mariupol
Ukrainian forces seized the rebel-held city hall in the eastern port city of Mariupol overnight, driving out pro-Russian activists, then withdrew, making no attempt to hold onto the building, witnesses said on Wednesday.
Ukraine's Channel 5 television said earlier the Ukrainian National Guard had seized the administrative centre in Mariupol, a mainly Russian-speaking city of half a million and key component in the self-declared breakaway People's Republic of Donetsk that will hold a referendum on secession this weekend.
But witnesses said the soldiers left after smashing furniture and office equipment. The smell of tear gas hung in the air inside the building which was largely empty in the morning, except for activists in gas masks clearing debris.
"They sent them from Lviv," one witness who said he was present told Reuters, referring to the western city that is a stronghold of the Ukrainian language and culture. "There was no shooting. They just told us they wanted us out and that's it." ...
"They don't want us to hold our referendum, but it's our right. That's democracy," one man named Alexander said at Mariupol town hall on Wednesday. "If this keeps going we won't even settle for federalization," he added, referring to a proposal for regional autonomy within a federal Ukraine.
"We could have negotiated but they won't even talk."
Looks like the desperate Ukrainian government would like to organize some more neo-nazi vigilante groups...
Ukraine announces change in army command amid calls for volunteers to help quell uprising
Ukraine’s interim government took additional steps Tuesday to reassert its control by appointing a new military commander and shoring up security forces, even as some leaders made urgent calls for volunteers to take up arms against pro-Russian separatists in the eastern part of the country.
Amid reports of fresh violence, former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko urged the creation of a “volunteer army” because neither Ukraine’s army nor its security services have been effective in handling outbreaks of rebellion, the Russian news service Interfax reported Tuesday.
Hers was one of many calls to form combat-ready units of “self-defense” forces ahead of May 25 presidential and mayoral elections. Andriy Tiron, battalion commander of the National Guard, told reporters in Kiev that demonstrators who helped oust the previous pro-Russian government were being urged to volunteer for military duty. But there was confusion about who would command them and what their duties would be.
Growing Anger as Both Sides Bury Their Dead
Multiple funerals around eastern Ukraine and Odessa added a somber undertone to the ongoing protests and the military offensive against the protests, with a growing sense that the chances of a negotiated settlement are evaporating.
With scores killed Friday and over the weekend, Monday and Tuesday saw more of the same, with troops attacking the city of Slovyansk in the east, reports of dozens killed on each side, and the interim government scrambling to install anti-protester leaders in and around Odessa. ...
Talks were looking less and less likely, and now seem virtually impossible, with the government ruling out letting the protesters attend the talks at all, and Russia ruling out participating without them.
Ukrainian nationalists mock, celebrate Odessa inferno victims
As usual, the western accusations lack evidence...
Russia is fomenting disorder in Ukraine to disrupt election, says William Hague
Russia is deliberately fomenting disorder in Ukraine to disrupt the presidential elections in the former Soviet republic later this month, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, has said.
As the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said pro-Russia rebels in the east of the country should be included in talks on an equal basis to the government in Kiev, Hague accused Moscow of failing to take action to implement the Geneva accord. ...
Hague was speaking after his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, warned that "we are not far from a military confrontation" amid an intensification of fighting in the south and east of Ukraine. Moscow called for rebels in control of much of the south and east to be included in talks on an equal basis.
Cuba arrests four Miami-based exiles suspected of attack plot
Cuba has arrested four Miami-based Cuban exiles suspected of planning attacks on military installations with the goal of promoting anti-government violence on the communist-run island, the interior ministry said.
Labeling the suspects terrorists, it said in a statement late on Tuesday that they were linked to Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile and former CIA operative living in Miami.
Cuba said it had contacted U.S. officials about the investigation, and that the four admitted to planning the attacks. Three of them had been traveling about the island since the middle of 2013 to plan its execution, according to the interior ministry statement published in official media. ...
Cuba said they were working for three others in Miami who all had closes ties to Posada Carriles.
Posada Carriles is wanted in Cuba and Venezuela over the bombing of a Cubana Airlines jet in 1976 that killed 73 people. He is also suspected of involvement in hotel bombings aimed at destabilizing Cuba and scaring away tourists.
Syrian rebels begin Homs evacuation
Opposition fighters in the Old City of Homs have started withdrawing from their positions, as part of a deal with Syrian forces that will mean all but one part of the the 'capital of the revolution' is now in regime hands.
The withdrawal comes five days after a ceasefire brokered between both sides that compels opposition fighters and their famiies to leave the area. Local officials said 120 people had so far boarded a fleet of buses sent to take them to another part of Homs. A total of 1,800 fighters are scheduled to leave, in a move that will all but mark the end of the insurrection in Syria's third city. ...
Only the Waer district of Homs remains in opposition hands, and a separate ceasefire there is soon likely to replicate the Homs exodus. With the fall of Homs imminent, the opposition to Bashar al-Assad poses an ever-diminishing threat in the western stretch of Syria from Tartous to Damascus, which is seen as the strategic heartland of the country.
Regime forces are firmly in control of almost all of that strip after Hezbollah, supported by Syrian units, first took the Sunni town of Qusair near the Lebanese border last May. Since then, Hezbollah, an Iraqi militia, Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas, homefront paramilitaries, the National Defence Front, and the Syrian military have won control of a mountain range north-west of Damascus, which gives them a clear path from the capital to Homs. ...
"It is difficult to imagine how the opposition could advance from here," one Beirut-based senior western official said. "Stalemate is as best as they can hope for."
Thai court orders PM to step down, prolonging political crisis
A Thai court ordered Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to step down on Wednesday after finding her guilty of abusing her power, prolonging a political crisis that has led to violent protests and brought the economy close to recession.
The decision is bound to anger supporters of Yingluck, but the court did allow ministers not implicated in the case against her to stay in office, a decision that could take some of the sting out of any backlash on the streets.
After the ruling, the cabinet said Commerce Minister Niwatthamrong Boonsongphaisan, who is also a deputy prime minister, would replace Yingluck, and the caretaker government would press ahead with plans for a July 20 election. ...
Thailand's protracted political crisis broadly pits Bangkok's middle class and royalist establishment against mainly poor, rural supporters of Yingluck and Thaksin, who lives in exile to avoid a 2008 jail sentence for abuse of power.
This is a very interesting interview with journalist Gareth Porter; it's worth taking a look at:
Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare
Q - Although the Iraqi nuclear “threat” was discredited as an utter fraud years ago, the idea that across the border Iran has sought, at least in the past, to build a nuclear weapon has long been widely accepted in political and media circles. Are you saying that the claim of secret work on nuclear weapons is equally fraudulent, and that the Iranians have never had a nuclear-weapons program?
A - Yes. In Manufactured Crisis, I show that the claim of an Iranian nuclear-weapons program has been based on false history and falsified records. The description of the Iranian nuclear program presented in official documents, in commentaries by think-tank “experts,” and in the media bears no resemblance to the essential historical facts. One would never know from the narrative available to the public over the years that Iran had been prepared in the early 1980s to rely entirely on a French-based company for enriched uranium fuel for its Bushehr reactor, rather than on enriching uranium itself. Nor would one learn that the Reagan Administration sought to strangle Iran’s nuclear program, which was admitted to have presented no proliferation threat, in its cradle by pressuring Germany and France to refuse to cooperate in any way. The significance of that missing piece of history is that Iran was confronted with a choice of submitting to the U.S. effort to deprive Iran of its right to a peaceful nuclear program under the Non-Proliferation Treaty or else acquiring its own enrichment capability.
Not surprisingly, the Iranians chose the latter course, and went to the black market in defiance of what was by that point a unilateral U.S. policy. Their decision is now described in the popular narrative as evidence that Iran was seeking nuclear weapons early on.
Ex-NSA chief claims Edward Snowden is under the control of Russian intelligence
Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed the U.S. government’s data collection programs, is now likely under the control of Russian intelligence agencies, according to former NSA Director, General Keith Alexander. ...
Snowden, who fled to Moscow last year, has dismissed the allegations. He expects his temporary asylum status in Russia to be renewed before it expires in summer, according to his lawyer.
“I think he is now being manipulated by Russian intelligence. I just don’t know when that exactly started or how deep it runs,” Alexander said.
“Understand as well that they’re only going to let him do those things that benefit Russia, or stand to help improve Snowden’s credibility. They’re not going to do things that would hurt themselves. And they’re not going to allow him to do it.”
Hat tip to dharmafarmer:
US officials: Extent of Israeli spying ‘shocking’
Israel’s aggressive and widespread espionage activity in the US is increasingly angering American government officials and has “crossed red lines,” Newsweek reported Tuesday.
The report anonymously quotes senior intelligence officials and congressional staffers who have been privy to information on Israeli spying activities. Staffers called the extent of Israeli espionage “sobering” and “shocking,” far exceeding similar activities by any other close US allies.
Some of the spying was allegedly industrial in nature, conducted by Israeli companies or individuals. But a significant amount appeared to be state-sanctioned reconnaissance gathering, according to the report.
“There are no other countries taking advantage of our security relationship the way the Israelis are for espionage purposes,” one former aide who attended a classified briefing on the issue told Newsweek. “It is quite shocking. I mean, it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that after all the hand-wringing over [Jonathan] Pollard, it’s still going on.”
Internet's Own Boy: 'Cyber-Robin Hood' Aaron Swartz honored in crowdfunded doc
Nobel Economists Back Call to End Failed 'War on Drugs'
Backed by five Nobel economists, numerous experts and government leaders, a new comprehensive report presented in London on Wednesday is calling for the end of the international so-called "war on drugs."
The London School of Economics report— >Ending the Drug Wars: Report of the LSE Expert Group on the Economics of Drug Policy (pdf)—outlines what its authors see as the "enormous negative outcomes and collateral damage" that have followed the militarized effort by governments who declared "war" on the illicit drug trade more than a generation ago and calls of those same governments to redirect taxpayer "resources away from an enforcement-led and prohibition-focused strategy" and instead focus on "proven public health policies of harm reduction and treatment" strategies for drug users.
As the report's foreword makes clear:
[Evidence of the global failure related to the "war on drugs"] include mass incarceration in the US, highly repressive policies in Asia, vast corruption and political destabilisation in Afghanistan and West Africa, immense violence in Latin America, an HIV epidemic in Russia, an acute global shortage of pain medication and the propagation of systematic human rights abuses around the world.
The strategy has failed based on its own terms. Evidence shows that drug prices have been declining while purity has been increasing. This has been despite drastic increases in global enforcement spending. Continuing to spend vast resources on punitive enforcement-led policies, generally at the expense of proven public health policies, can no longer be justified.
The United Nations has for too long tried to enforce a repressive, ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. It must now take the lead in advocating a new cooperative international framework based on the fundamental acceptance that different policies will work for different countries and regions.
This new global drug strategy should be based on principles of public health, harm reduction, illicit market impact reduction, expanded access to essential medicines, minimisation of problematic consumption, rigorously monitored regulatory experimentation and an unwavering commitment to principles of human rights.
Antiwar Rep. Walter Jones Beats Neocon-Backed GOP Rival
Strongly antiwar incumbent Rep. Walter Jones (R – NC) has won a hotly contested primary tonight, defeating a challenge from hawkish challenger and former Treasury Dept. official Taylor Griffin 51% to 45%.
A Congressman since 1995, Rep. Jones was challenged almost exclusively on his foreign policy positions, including his opposition to various US wars and foreign aid to Israel.
Griffin, by contrast, was heavily bankrolled by the Emergency Committee for Israel and the Ending Spending Fund SuperPAC, who put in over $1 million combined.
Will Dark Money Reshape North Carolina Political Landscape From Senate Race to State Supreme Court?
Occupy trial juror describes shock at activist's potential prison sentence
As Cecily McMillan was led to a cell in handcuffs amid uproar from her supporters, the 12 jurors who had just convicted the Occupy Wall Street activist of assaulting a New York police officer were whisked away in a police van. On the two-mile trip north through Manhattan to Union Square, where they were deposited well away from Monday's courtroom commotion, some pulled out mobile phones and began searching online for news on the trial they had just spent a month of their lives considering.
Finally freed from a ban on researching the case, including potential punishments, some were shocked to learn that they had just consigned the 25-year-old to a sentence of up to seven years in prison, one told the Guardian. “They felt bad,” said the juror, who did not wish to be named. “Most just wanted her to do probation, maybe some community service. But now what I’m hearing is seven years in jail? That’s ludicrous. Even a year in jail is ridiculous.”
Though it came as a surprise to some of the eight women and four men who found her guilty of second-degree assault, McMillan said that the potential prison sentence had been on her mind for the two years since she was arrested for elbowing Officer Grantley Bovell in the face at a demonstration in Zuccotti Park, where protesters had gathered to mark six months of the Occupy movement. ...
McMillan is due to be sentenced on 19 May. She rejected an earlier offer from prosecutors for her to plead guilty, which still would have resulted in her being classed as a felon, in exchange for a recommendation to the judge that she should not receive a prison sentence.
Afterwards, she said, she wants nothing more to do with New York and plans to move back to Atlanta, Georgia, where she spent much of her childhood, to work as a community organiser. And she said she expected to emerge unbowed from her punishment.
Occupy Activist Found Guilty of Assaulting Police Officer, but Was Justice Served?
Outrage and Protests Follow Guilty Verdict for OWS Activist
People across the United States responded with outrage after Occupy Wall Street activist Cecily McMillan was found guilty Monday afternoon of "assaulting" the very police officer who she says sexually assaulted her.
Over 100 people rallied in New York City's Zuccotti Park Monday night and, according to advocates, messages of support immediately began pouring in from across the country. ...
Lucy Parks, field coordinator for Justice For Cecily, told Democracy Now! that McMillan's supporters are busy figuring out next steps, with plans to organize petitions, call-in days, and other mobilizations in the works.
"We're also trying to bring together communities of U.S. activists and anyone who feels strongly about this trial to try and heal and move forward and broaden the conversation about the justice system to talk about more people than just Cecily," Parks added.
Jail the Bankers? Obama Has Been Their Staunchest Defender
The Obama administration is in a makeover frenzy, cosmetically cleaning up its corporatist act for the sake of the lame duck president’s legacy and endangered Democrats in Congress. Evils must be reapportioned in the public mind, so that the balance between lesser and greater abominations is perceived to tilt in the Democrats’ favor – a tough trick, given the beating the party’s base constituencies have taken since 2008 at the hands of the duopoly Dem-Rep tag-team. Historical revisionism is, thus, the order of the day. ...
Attorney General Holder pretends to threaten Wall Street bankers with jail time – a notion so hilarious it should have had them rolling on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange. Jail the bankers? Obama has been their staunchest defender, the man who saved George Bush’s original bank bailout from defeat (weeks before the 2008 election), and has since configured the entire financial structure of the American State to the service of his most important constituents: Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs. “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks,” Obama reminded the banksters in his Oval Office, back in 2009. He has never failed them, presiding over the infusion of roughly $30 trillion (2011 figures) directly into their accounts or as guarantees of their business transactions – roughly twice the Gross Domestic Product of the United States. Ain’t that love?
Routine prosecutions of corporate crimes are actually at historically low levels under Obama, despite tsunamis of scandals, including several “Crimes of the Century.” Under the pressures of Obama history revisionism, Holder will snare some fat white faces to create the impression of a crackdown on corporate bad actors, confident that all Wall Street types look alike to the average consumer of news. Most people make little distinction between a Bernie Madoff, who lived like a king on a giant Ponzi scheme, and Jamie Dimon, who IS a king of the American Empire, with all the immunities accorded to those at the top of the Ruling Class. Bernie Madoff will die in prison. Jamie Dimon, whose bank turned a blind eye to Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and profited handsomely from it, remains on the top of the world (although JP Morgan Chase was fined $2 billion).
Seattle to debate $15 minimum wage law amid warnings of 'class warfare'
The only socialist city councillor in the United States is torn.
On the one hand, Kshama Sawant has claimed an “historic victory” for a populist campaign that pressured Seattle’s mayor, politicians and business owners to embrace by far the highest across-the-board minimum wage in the US at $15 an hour.
On the other, the economics professor accuses the Democratic party establishment and corporate interests of colluding to compromise its implementation as the city council on Monday begins to hammer out the terms for setting pay at more than double the federal minimum wage. Sawant is gearing up to put the issue on the ballot in November’s election if the final legislation is not to her liking – a move Seattle’s mayor has warned could result in “class warfare” as it is likely to pit big business against increasingly vocal low-paid workers and to divide the trade unions. ...
Smaller businesses with fewer than 250 workers and non-profit groups would get a three-year phase-in with incremental increases. “The public battle on $15 an hour, that number, has been lost by business,” said Sawant. “There is so much support that they’re not able to come out and say: I don’t support 15. Now the fault lines have gone to: I support 15 but we have to do it thoughtfully. What they mean is, let’s not. Or let’s do it in such a way that it takes 10 years to get to $15. Then it’s meaningless. We’re saying that workers need $15 an hour in today’s dollars.” ...
The city council is free to reject the recommendations of the mayor’s committee as it considers legislation in the coming weeks but it is likely the Democratic party establishment will rally around Murray.
Sawant is keeping up the pressure in league with a 15 Now campaign to collect 30,000 voter signatures to bypass the council and put an amendment to the city’s charter on the ballot in November requiring a $15 minimum wage on her terms.
Murray said he wants to avoid a fight over a ballot initiative because it “would end up in a mini-version of class warfare”.
Segregation Rebounding: The Political Defeat of School Integration
Fourteen years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregated education unconstitutional, the justices determined that the pace of integration, which was supposed to be proceeding “with all deliberate speed,” was far too slow. In it’s 1968 ruling on the Kent County, Virginia, schools, the High Court ordered that segregated systems must be dismantled “root and branch.” That meant classrooms, faculty, other school system staff, extracurricular activities, and the transportation that took the kids to and from school. This “root and branch” ruling put school desegregation into higher gear. Judges across the country issued orders on how school systems must go about desegregating, some of them in great detail and with close oversight from the court. At the height of judicial desegregation activity, 750 school districts were under court order.
Three hundred school districts remain under desegregation order, today, but some of those communities don’t even know the order is still in effect, many have substantially resegregated, and the Justice Department is sometimes also in the dark, according to Nikole Hannah-Jones, who spent a year researching her authoritative article “Lack of Order: The Erosion of a Once-Great Force for Integration.” The story is part of ProPublica’s series “Segregation Now,” a study of the various forms of racial segregation in the United States. ...
Reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones found that the Obama Justice and Education Departments don’t even have an accurate list of the desegregation orders that remain legally in effect in local districts. ... Today, Black students are more segregated than in the Seventies, but all the Obama administration wants to talk about is testing and getting rid of teachers, and turning schools into privately-managed charters – which studies have shown tend to be more segregated than public schools.
The political defeat of school integration appears to be all but complete – except on television shows and in the movies.
The Evening Greens
Foretelling Devastating Impact, Will White House Climate Report Spark Action on Global Warming?
'Screwed?' US Climate Report says Era of 'Normal' Over
"We're screwed. Right now. And it could get much worse."
That was how 350.org co-founder Jamie Henn responded to Tuesday's release of the federal government's National Climate Assessment, the national scientific community's definitive statement on the current and future impacts of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
Compiling the efforts of 300 leading climate scientists and experts, the message is "bleak" as the NCA details how human-caused global warming is being felt "here and now" nationwide.
As a consequence of the nearly two degree Fahrenheit rise which occurred throughout the country over the past century, the report says, Americans are experiencing water scarcity in dry regions, increasing torrential rains in wet ones, increasingly severe heat waves, worsening wildfires, and the death of forests as a result of heat-loving invasive insect species.
And all of this is likely to worsen as average temperatures continue to increase. The authors, who were solicited by the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee, estimate that global warming could exceed 10 degrees Fahrenheit in the United States by the end of this century.
Government Climate Report Predicts More Bad News, But How Do You Reverse Course?
Keystone bill likely to fail in Senate
A congressional effort to bypass the White House and approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline appears likely to fizzle this week, CNN has learned.
The development comes after three Democratic senators, who cast their support previously for the long-delayed, cross-border pipeline, said they would vote against the legislation. ...
Simply moving forward with the vote also would be a political boost for several red-state Democrats facing tough re-election battles who support the pipeline and who want to prove to their constituents that they did everything possible to get it approved. ...
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Keystone opponent, surprised many when he said last week he was open to allowing a vote on the legislation in the coming days.
But now his strategy is becoming clearer - allow a vote that would fail in the Senate, but succeed in giving political cover to some of his most endangered Democratic colleagues - those who if they lose in November could mean a Republican takeover of the Senate.
Oklahoma Earthquake Rate Breaking Records, and Fracking Could Be to Blame
Fracking-related injection wells are likely behind the "remarkable" increase in earthquakes in Oklahoma, scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey have said.
The USGS and the Oklahoma Geological Survey on Friday issued a joint statement warning that the surging seismicity — up roughly 50 percent since October 2013 — means that central Oklahoma is at a significantly increased risk of a 5.5 or greater quake.
Since just the start of this year, 145 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater have struck the state, breaking the record 109 set last year.
Those numbers are a far cry from the two 3.0 magnitude or larger earthquakes per year that occurred between 1978 and 2008.
The USGS stated that the changes "do not seem to be due to typical, random fluctuations in natural seismicity rates."
Record Number of Oklahoma Tremors Raises Possibility of Damaging Earthquakes
The rate of earthquakes in Oklahoma has increased remarkably since October 2013 – by about 50 percent – significantly increasing the chance for a damaging magnitude 5.5 or greater quake in central Oklahoma. ... Oklahoma’s heightened earthquake activity since 2009 includes 20 magnitude 4.0 to 4.8 quakes, plus the largest earthquake in Oklahoma’s history – a magnitude 5.6 earthquake that occurred near Prague on Nov. 5, 2011. ...
USGS statistically analyzed the recent earthquake rate changes and found that they do not seem to be due to typical, random fluctuations in natural seismicity rates. Significant changes in both the background rate of events and earthquake triggers needed to have occurred in order to explain the increases in seismicity, which is not typically observed when modeling natural earthquakes.
The analysis suggests that a likely contributing factor to the increase in earthquakes is triggering by wastewater injected into deep geologic formations. This phenomenon is known as injection-induced seismicity, which has been documented for nearly half a century, with new cases identified recently in Arkansas, Ohio, Texas and Colorado. A recent publication by the USGS suggests that a magnitude 5.0 foreshock to the 2011 Prague, Okla., earthquake was human-induced by fluid injection; that earthquake may have then triggered the mainshock and its aftershocks. OGS studies also indicate that some of the earthquakes in Oklahoma are due to fluid injection. The OGS and USGS continue to study the Prague earthquake sequence in relation to nearby injection activities.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
UN Probe Chief Doubtful on Syria Sarin Exposure Claims
Here Are New, Disturbing Pictures of the Arrest of Cecily McMillan
Vienna Offers Affordable and Luxurious Public Housing
Buckle Up
A Little Night Music
Carla Thomas - I've Got No Time To Lose
Carla Thomas - B-A-B-Y
Carla Thomas - Pick up the pieces
Carla Thomas - You'll lose a good thing
Rufus Thomas ft. Carla Thomas - The Night Time Is The Right Time
Otis Redding & Carla Thomas - Tramp
Carla Thomas - Comfort Me
Otis Redding & Carla Thomas - Knock On Wood
Carla Thomas - I Like What You're Doing To Me
Carla Thomas - Unyielding
Carla Thomas - I'll Bring It Home To You
Carla Thomas - I Got My Mojo Working
Otis Redding & Carla Thomas - Lovey Dovey
It's National Pie Day!
The election is over, it's a new year and it's time to work on real change in new ways... and it's National Pie Day. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to tell you a little more about our new site and to start getting people signed up.
Come on over and sign up so that we can send you announcements about the site, the launch, and information about participating in our public beta testing.
Why is National Pie Day the perfect opportunity to tell you more about us? Well you'll see why very soon. So what are you waiting for?! Head on over now and be one of the first!
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